Angry Birds

Hot off their Batman: Arkham Origins crossover, GungHo Online Entertainment has landed another collaboration that makes a little more sense for their addictive dungeon-crawling puzzler. Beginning November 18, till December 1,...

If M&Ms are allowed to have a kart racer, surely Rovio can try its hand at the genre free of guilt. Those angry birds are certainly iconic, and I suppose that's what matters most here.
Angry Birds Go! is exactly what you...

Sep 20 //
Chris Carter
Angry Birds Star Wars II (Android, iOS [reviewed on an iPhone 5], Windows Phone)Developer: Rovio EntertainmentPublisher: Rovio EntertainmentReleased: September 18, 2013MSRP: $0.99
Whereas the first Angry Birds Star Wars dealt with A New Hope through Return of the Jedi, Angry Birds Star Wars II takes place in the prequel timeline, from The Phantom Menace through Revenge of the Sith. Unfortunately, that means starting with the tandem of Qui-Gon Jinn and a young Obi-Wan Kenobi trekking their way across Naboo, which isn't one of the more particularly engaging settings in the franchise. Thankfully, the following chapter of Tatooine is a bit more fun, even if it feels like a minor re-tread of the first game.
In addition to Naboo and Tatooine, you'll also have access to special "reward chapters," which are basically a few challenges involving specific characters. Other than that, the rest of the content is "coming soon," and at this time you're basically still stuck in Phantom Menace. What you're doing is essentially purchasing the promise of more updates and levels, which thankfully Rovio consistently provides (they're still updating the original Angry Birds four years later).
This time around, you can play as the "Pork Side" [Dark Side], which puts you in control of the pigs. When this feature was first announced, I was pretty excited at the prospect of maybe setting up bases to defend myself against the birds. Lo and behold, the Pork Side is simply more levels with different characters, flung exactly like birds. It's not like these levels are inherently worse, since you're playing as characters like Jango Fett and Darth Sidious, it's just that it's more of the same -- Angry Birds in a nutshell, really.
Gameplay-wise things are relatively the same, drawing from the classic Angry Birds flying formula, and even a bit of space physics from Angry Birds Space. That said, it's still fun, and the sheer amount of characters (Light, Dark, and Star Wars Episode 4-6) and the diversity of their powers helps to move things along rather nicely, and cut down on the boredom factor.
In-app purchases are available (of course), but they're thankfully just tools to allow you to use certain characters on every level. So for instance, when a stage may stick you with a crew of Yoda birds, you would be able to sub in other birds if you use your in-game currency of coins earned through achievements, or buy more coins with real money.
It's fairly inoffensive (surprisingly), because every level can be completed legitimately without buying anything, and if future updates are like they were in the first Angry Birds Star Wars, you'll be able to unlock DLC areas by three-starring every level when they arrive for free.
Another new feature is the ability to place physical toys on your device and scan them in using a camera. Like Pokemon Rumble U, they're completely optional additions that don't really break the game in any way. Similar to purchasing birds and pigs with the in-game currency system mentioned above, all the toys allow you to do is once again use special characters in place of another.
You should know where you stand on Angry Birds. If you absolutely hate the IP, the concept, and the sound of them yelling as they fly through the air, this won't do much to change your mind, even if the Star Wars factor will help ease in Jedi junkies a bit. But if you don't mind spending a few minutes a day just having some silly fun, Angry Birds Star Wars II delivers once again.
And yes, it is totally possible to enjoy Angry Birds and other things at the same time.

Join the Pork Side, AnakinI don't get the widespread outrage over so called "casual," simple-minded games. I can spend an afternoon plugging away at the most time-consuming and complex RPG imaginable, and if Angry Birds is thrown in every now and then, so be it.
Yes, I'm reviewing an Angry Birds game. Deal with it.

Ian McDiarmid (Emperor Palpatine in the Star Wars films), wants you to "Join the Pork Side" in Angry Birds Star Wars 2. Set to drop on September 19 for iOS, Android, and Windows Phones, it'll be a $0.99 app -- on Android, th...

Activision will be at gamescom and are planning to wave their giant wads of money around as they will have the biggest ever demo-theater ever built in gamescom history for Destiny. It comes in at 72ft in length, 43ft wide, a...

Since I know everyone here asked for it, Angry Birds Star Wars is heading to pretty much every system under the sun on October 29, 2013. Specifically, it'll hit the Xbox 360, PS3, PS Vita, Wii U, Wii and 3DS. It'll come with...

Rovio's tease from last week has been unveiled and it's pretty much what we expected: Angry Birds Star Wars II. Releasing September 19 for mobile devices, this sequel will span the three prequel movies and even incorporate p...

Rovio has just teased a new picture today that hints at what's coming next for the Angry Birds franchise -- specifically, Angry Birds Star Wars. Pretty much everyone will recognize this as the iconic poster for Star Wars: A P...

I'm pretty sure you've heard of Angry Birds by now. It's a game where you fling vengeful birds across a screen so you can murder other animals, who cooked up and ate the birds' young. It's a pretty sick game but people seem ...

It's a monumental weekend for Apple, which is days (hours? minutes?) away from 50 billion downloads.
It's not hard to think back to a time when the App store seemed insignificant, but looking at Apple's published lists of the...

Who says you have to make AAA console games to make money? While the big guys are shutting down left and right, Rovio flings off their financial results for 2012 showing that they're growing at an amazing rate. The Espoo, Fin...

Rovio has expanded their Angry Birds empire today, conquering the last foreseeable platform left with Angry Birds Space: Steam. It's weird to think about, but, yes, this is the very first time an Angry Birds title h...

I've listened to plenty of videogame musical covers in the seven years I've worked at Destructoid. Yet, this is the first time I've heard of a musical cover montage with a Middle-Eastern twist to them. There's even some games covered here I'd never expect, like Alley Cat.
[Via The Awesomer]

Feb 22 //
Vito GesualdiZynga wasn't even creative enough to come up with their own RGB skintone values...
Thing is, the laws regarding which aspects of a video game are covered by copyright are actually quite fuzzy, and unfortunately, EA and Zynga have settled the matter out of court, failing to establish the precedent so badly needed in this legal gray area. Just one look at the app store and you'll find hundreds of blatant clones, quick hack jobs thrown together to capitalize on the success of other popular games. Though if you dig deeper into the history of the industry, it becomes obvious that ripoffs have been a big part of the gaming industry since its very beginning.
So, as a bit of a history lesson, here are five of the most notorious game ripoffs of all-time.
The Great Giana Sisters
When Super Mario Bros. first released in 1985, it revolutionized gaming forever; the wildly successful game laid the foundations for the side-scrolling platformer and showed off just how powerful Nintendo’s Famicom system was. In fact, the Famicom was actually more powerful than many home computers of the time, something made very apparent by Hudson’s disgustingly ugly PC port of Nintendo's most famous game.
Who needs sidescrolling when you've got screen flicker?
Interestingly enough, though developers eventually figured out how to make sidescrollers work on the PC, by that point Nintendo was no longer interested in porting their games, even turning away a spot-on a Mario demo put together by id Software (who would go on to use the technology in Commander Keen). So, with PC gamers eager for their own Mario game, it seemed obvious that someone would eventually come along with a simple clone to help fill this hole in the market. What people didn't expect is just how blatant they'd be about it.
See, Time Warp Productions might’ve almost gotten away with cloning Mario if they’d had the sense to not make their lifts so painfully obvious. Despite some minor graphical changes (diamonds instead of coins, owls instead of goombas), The Great Giana Sisters looks exactly like Super Mario Bros. In fact, the first stage of the game is an almost perfect copy of the first stage of Mario, with the few extra pits thrown in before the final flag not enough to fool Nintendo's copyright lawyers.
See, our warp pipes are orange. It's a totally different game.
Though Nintendo never took any legal action against Time Warp, they did make it very clear to retailers that those continuing to peddle this blatant Mario clone might find their orders for Nintendo product going strangely unfulfilled. As a result, the game was quickly removed from store shelves, and is now quite a desired item for Atari ST and Amiga collectors.
However, the strangest thing about The Great Giana Sisters is that this strange, forgettable clone survived to the modern age. While as recently as 2009 the series was still ripping off Mario, the latest Giana Sisters’ game was actually a wholly unique puzzle/platformer. Though the series will likely always carry the stigma of having ripped off gaming’s most beloved franchise, it’s definitely interesting to see a series finally trying to find its own identity.
Most of Square's early game catalog
Though Square (now Square Enix) has earned a reputation as one of the finest purveyors of RPGs (at least until Final Fantasy XIII…), there was a time when this fledgling game company was barely a blip on the radar. It wasn’t until Square got approved to develop games for the original Nintendo system that they really got to work… ripping off Sega.
And don't ask why a company named Square has a stylized Triangle in their logo...
See, in the mid '80s Sega had some of the most popular arcade games around, but the home ports were only available on their own Master System console. Square saw the chance to cash in with some quick clones and capitalized on it. One of their first releases, 3D World Runner, was a terrible ripoff of Space Harrier which kept most of the action on the ground, only letting you fly around and shoot dragons (see: the fun parts) during the tragically short boss battles. Not long after came Rad Racer, a blatant copy of Sega's arcade racer Outrun, which, despite being a minor hit, wasn't enough to pull Square's revenues out of the red.
With Square’s money running out, company director Hironobu Sakaguchi decided to take a risk on ripping off the work of a different company, now looking to Enix’s wildly popular Dragon Quest (itself a ripoff of Origin’s Ultima series) for inspiration. Knowing that if the game failed he’d quit the game industry and head back to school, Sakaguchi realized this ripoff could be his “Final Fantasy.”
Ms. Pac-Man
When Pac-Man first hit American arcades in October of 1980, the little yellow circle immediately began gobbling up not just power pellets, but quarters as well, quickly becoming one of the most popular arcade games of all time. Given this wild success, North American distributor Midway was eager to put out a sequel, though the developers at Namco were strangely dragging their feet.
Around this same time, three young programmers were realizing the potential market for arcade conversion kits. Arcades were constantly purchasing new games in order to keep players interested, but each new machine was a risky investment, as a bad game might not bring in enough money to cover the cost of the machine. Conversion kits were the perfect solution, letting arcade operators upgrade games that they already knew players would like, while costing much less than a new machine. The trio quickly formed the General Computer Corporation (GCC) and set to work making plug-in boards.
The original Plug n' Play game.
Unfortunately for the boys at GCC, their idea wasn’t too popular with arcade manufacturers, who stood to lose plenty to this new technology. Atari was the first to react, taking GCC to court over Super Missile Attack, a mod of Missile Command. Though the two parties settled, GCC realized it could be fairly risky to continue with their new venture. However, they’d already sunk much of their time into a ripoff of Pac-Man, called Crazy Otto. With nothing to lose, they decided to see if Midway would consider buying their mod.
See, it's like Pac-Man with legs! Totally new!
What happened next is gaming history. Midway liked Crazy Otto so much they actually signed a deal behind Namco’s back, rebranding the game as Ms. Pac Man and quickly releasing it to arcades. Though Namco’s own sequel, Super Pac-Man, would release later that same year, the souped-up ripoff of the original Pac-Man’s code was the better game by far.
What’s even more interesting is that GCC would later take Midway to court over their game Baby Pac-Man (a similarly unauthorized sequel), claiming they were originally responsible for the idea of a Pac-Man family. I mean, it’s one thing to ripoff a game, another to have your ripoff become the game’s official sequel, and another entirely to sue the company who helped make your ripoff an official sequel because they liked your ripoff so much they started making their own ripoffs based on it.
GCC makes laser printers now, which seems like a much less confusing industry.
Angry Birds
If you think you're sick of seeing crappy Angry Birds merchandise littering your local shopping mall, imagine how the developers of Castle Clout must feel, having devised the simple game formula which has now made Rovio millions of dollars in app sales and licensing deals.
This ranks right below Decca Records not signing The Beatles on the "missed opportunity" list.
Though Castle Clout is definitely a bit rough around the edges, all the basic elements of Angry Birds are in there. Structures waiting to be toppled, various bad guys to be squished by the falling blocks, and a big catapult firing off a variety of projectiles. Though Angry Birds added some serious polish, and replaced the awkward catapult mechanism with some wonderfully responsive slingshot touch controls, at heart, it's still a clear evolution of this now forgotten flash game, and you hope they'd at least have the courtesy to send the guy a free t-shirt.
Indeed.
Thing is, it’s kind of hard to be upset at Angry Birds. After all, the mechanic of using catapults to knock down structures can be traced back to, oh I don’t know… the ancient greeks? If anything, the real moral of the story is that if you have a successful flash game, get that thing on mobile phones as soon as possible, preferably adding a bunch of crappy cartoon animal mascots to it, so you can later brand every piece of merchandise known to humankind.
The Simpsons: Road Rage
The Simpsons: Road Rage is what happens when you have the rights to one of the most successful television franchises of all time and zero total creativity. I like to imagine that someone in the planning meeting for this game asked, “Why would the Simpsons be driving taxis?” before being dragged down to the basement and bludgeoned to death with sacks of money. Remember, this is Electronic Arts: the same guys who invented a bunch of crappy original characters just so they could try to ripoff Marvel vs. Capcom. The same guys who wanted to make their own Goldeneye and came up with the idea of a guy with an actual golden eye.
This is unfathomably stupid.
Point is, EA is full of dangerous psychopaths who care more about money than logic, and if they say the Simpsons are going to be driving taxis then you best shut your mouth and start programming.
So, you might be wondering what makes Road Rage a notable ripoff. After all, there are plenty of crappy licensed titles which blatantly steal their ideas from other games, with The Simpsons having copied everything from Tony Hawk's Pro Skater to Grand Theft Auto without incident.
See, our game has a hand instead of an arrow. totally new!
What Electronic Arts didn’t know is that, unlike the other developers they stole from, Sega actually owned patents on some very specific Crazy Taxi features. For instance: pedestrians that jump out of the way of a car, or giant floating arrows which show the player where to go. That’s right, Sega owns the rights to people not wanting to get hit by cars and arrows that point at things.
They should’ve really pushed their luck and tried to get a patent for cars that drive really fast.
Rather than take a chance on forfeiting all the money they’d made from the million or so copies of Road Rage sold, EA choose to settle the eventual lawsuit, much like they did this month in response to Zynga's counter-suit (saying it's okay that The Ville ripped off The Sims Social, because The Sims Social was ripping off CityVille to begin with). It seems that until a big company like EA decides to grow a pair and actually fight it out in court, small game developers are pretty much forced to accept that their original ideas will be endlessly cloned, as has been the case in this industry for decades now.
Now, if only we could pass some laws outlawing crappy Simpsons games…

Okay games, great lawsuitsWhen I first heard that Electronic Arts was suing Zynga over The Ville, a rather blatant ripoff of EA’s The Sims Social, I was pretty excited to see the outcome. After all, there’s nothing worse than a company whose only business model is to steal the works of small game developers, and given some of The Ville's obvious lifts, it seemed as though EA had a very solid case.

Although the Angry Birds Trilogy had a 360, PS3, and 3DS release last year, it looks like the Activision/Rovio/Nintendo partnership is seeing more action in 2013, as the trilogy is now set for Wii and Wii U release.
Activisio...

Another week of new releases is upon us! I hope you're not broke.
After many months of furious debates, arguments, and colorful name calling, we can finally shut the hell up and just play (or not play) DmC: Devil May Cry.&nb...

It's wild to think how successful Rovio has been in adapting Angry Birds to so many different areas -- in fact, a full-fledged animated movie seems relatively tame by comparison. The company has given another update on the An...

WUT. No, seriously. WUT.
The fact that there is Angry Birds soda isn't what shocks me. You can buy novelty Mega Man and Pac-Man energy drinks. I sampled some very sugary Mario-themed beverages back in the day. Hell, remember ...

In retrospect, Rovio Entertainment collaborating with Lucasfilm seems spot on. Not so much thematically, but in terms of how both Star Wars and Angry Birds have made obscene amounts of money through merchandising. Now, t...

We weren't live today, but that's okay. We still love you. To prove it, here's some news about Sim City, Retro City Rampage, Angry Birds, and of course... The Unfinished Swan. So, different types of cities, and different types of birds. VIDEO GAMES.

I know, I know -- but it's not any more ridiculous than Green Day partnering with Angry Birds. An official tweet from @AngryBirds directed users to a new Tumblr page, which has an animated version of the above teaser. (Try no...

Bad Piggies popped on to the App Store last week and it didn't take long to become Rovio's most successful game launch to date. It took less than three hours, according to the publisher, to hit the top of the App Store's...

Whilst the Angry Birds franchise strives to become perhaps the most ubiquitous Scandinavian thing ever, displacing IKEA and ABBA, it seems like we often forget there's a series of videogames at the heart of it all. The n...

Rovio has announced an actual sequel -- not a spin-off -- to its ludicrously popular Angry Birds series. Bad Piggies reverses the roles and puts players on the side of the green pigs that have served as cannon fodder across ...

Because Angry Birds has to have it's hand in everything, or maybe because everyone wants to be part of this ever-expanding franchise, Green Day is now teaming up with Rovio to add band themed levels to the hit game. Thes...

Aug 15 //
Hamza CTZ AzizControl wise, you simple just pull back on the joystick on the Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 controller, and then press A to launch your bird. You get so much more precise aim with the joystick over the touch screen that I know I'm always going to be slightly annoyed when playing the mobile version from now on. There's also PlayStation Move and Kinect support. With Kinect, you use your left hand to aim, and lifting your right hand will launch the bird. Bringing down your right hand will use the bird's special attack. The Angry Birds Trilogy package also includes a ton of extras, from bird biographies, hand drawn sketches from the team from the initial development of the first game, a cutscene viewer so you can rewatch all of the now fully animated cutscenes, and more.
Honestly, as much as I liked the game I know I wouldn't pay $39.99 for it myself. I'm okay with playing the cheapass mobile versions I already have. I think this is for more of the diehard fans if anything, and the moms and dads out there who don't want to stare at a tiny screen to play.

So I like Angry Birds. Yeah, I said it haters. It's a fun physics based puzzle game, and a great time waster when I'm on the go. I can never look at the mobile game the same again though thanks to what I played of Angry Birds...

Happy Friday, wonderbuns! Max and I totally hosted a live Destructoid Show today but forgot to post about it here beforehand and now EVERYTHING SUCKS. You'll watch the recorded episode though, right? To make me feel better? ...

It looks like the newest member of the Angry Birds family is "Pink" -- a cute looking character that enjoys blowing bubbles, and happens to share the other birds' disdain for pig-kind everywhere.It's unclear what Pink's exac...

Check out this physical controller designed by students at Copenhagen Institute of Interactive Design for use with Angry Birds. As you can see, it tilts, pulls, fires and totally belongs in my house.
Setting aside for the mo...